Thursday, July 25, 2013

Habitat for Humanity ReStores
will pick up lightly used items including furniture, appliances, cabinets for
the kitchen and bath, as well as a variety of household goods for resale in a
local ReStore. By donating to a ReStore, you gain a quick and reliable way to
remove items you no longer want or need.

Clients can
request a tax receipt for their charitable donation.

ReStores benefit
our environment because tons of material gets diverted from landfills to be
repurposed and reused.

Profits from
ReStores go to local Habitat affiliates to carry out their mission at home and
abroad. Great satisfaction comes from involvement with Habitat for Humanity to
fund construction of decent affordable homes and strengthen communities.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

A new webinar from Tobi Fairley titled "How to Determine Your Staffing Needs" (0.1 CEU) is now available on LMS on the IDS website.

Description: Are you a designer who is confused about when
and how to hire people to handle some part of the work of your design firm?
Need to know how best to keep your operation “lean and mean” yet still highly
productive? If so, join Tobi Fairley for this training on determining your staffing
needs and then taking action to get the job done! This webinar is worth .1 CEUs.

Monday, July 8, 2013

Five years ago, only 25% of interior
designers had a website. Many designers did not know how to “right click” on
their mouse, they hadn’t heard of webinars, webcasts or teleseminars, and a
small percentage had an email address.

Today it is essential for you to
be tech-savvy because your clients are, and if you’re similar to your
colleagues, it can be overwhelming to keep up with technology tools.

Don’t fall into the trap of
trying each new technology tool – just decide what functionality you really
need to run an efficient and effective business.

I am assuming that you already
have a laptop, a smart phone and a tablet like an iPad. Since there are
thousands of software applications available at varying prices, I’ll break the
options into categories and prioritize what you should consider.

Accounting and Project Management - #1 Priority

Since the business of interior
design is complex, you need accounting software that mirrors the work that you
do. Our recent Interior Design Fee & Salary
Survey eBookshowed that more than half of
designers used QuickBooks™. Though QuickBooks™ does provide standard accounting
capabilities, there are other options that you can and should consider.

As a design firm owner, I started
with Quicken Home & Business™ ($159.99) when I was working alone and was new
to the business. Once the firm started growing, I used QuickBooks™. QuickBooks™ did not work well for our firm because it wasn’t designed
for our industry. Even today, there are different versions of QuickBooks™
including an online version, but it is missing several features that are
crucial to a well-run business.

You can purchase a desktop
version of QuickBooks Pro™ for $249.99, or you can use QuickBooks Online ™which
is hosted in the cloud. The cost ranges from $12.95 to $78.95 per month. The
higher end includes payroll capabilities, purchase orders, access for multiple
users and many other important features like time tracking, expediting tracking
and proposals that can be created with multiple components like fabric, trim,
frames, etc.

After our firm used QuickBooks™
for a few years, we moved to Design Manager™. It was certainly better because it included more features that were
relevant to our industry like the ability to create proposals, purchase orders,
expedite, track time and produce reports. Design Manager™ is available as a
desktop product, or you can use the cloud version. I could not access the
current pricing for the product.

Though Design Manager™ was
significantly better than QuickBooks™ for our business, my designers found it
hard to learn. It has been a number of years since I’ve used these products, so
it is likely to be more user-friendly today.

We shopped for more options and chose
StudioIT
Studio Designer which was easier for my team to learn. Today, the basic version
of Studio IT is $500 for one work station, and the Professional Version is
$2,750. Both versions charge $150 extra per additional user. If you have a team
of designers and a bookkeeper or outside accountant, StudioIT is expensive.

What I like about StudioIT is the
reporting capability, and the fact that you enter information one time, and
from that, you create your proposal, purchase order and invoice.

The downside of purchasing a
desktop software package is that future enhancements aren’t included in the
software. You control your costs by paying up front, but future functionality
may be sacrificed.

The cloud version of StudioIT is Studio Webware
which is a great product, in my opinion. Many of our members use Studio Webware
and love it. The downside is that it is so feature-rich that it takes some time
to learn how to fully utilize the product. The Professional version is $35 per
user per month, and the Basic Version is $25 per user per month.

Additional features include
project management in the Professional Version, and unlimited email support for
the first year. Another great feature is Studio Project which allows you to
collaborate and share information with your clients. This is a great feature
that increases efficiency of communication. The software stores email threads
related to particular products which means that you have written documentation
of approvals, conversations, etc.

Choosing the chassis for the
infrastructure of your business is crucial. When you have a product that matches
your processes, it may be difficult to learn in the beginning, but it will make
your business run more smoothly especially if you have a team. Paraphrasing a
great quote – “Do the hard things to make things easy, or the easy things to
make things hard.”

A rule of thumb for preparing for
a software conversion is to budget five times the cost of the software for the
costs of consulting, data entry and training. Allow at least 4 – 6 months to
plan for the conversion, and save stress and time by hiring a consultant that
knows the software you are planning to use. Your consultant should also
understand the business of interior design. Plan to do a conversion at your
fiscal year-end, or at least do it at the end of a month.

If you have an accountant or bookkeeper
that prefers QuickBooks, it is likely you will be having an argument about
switching to software that he or she does not know. Ultimately, it is crucial
that you decide what is right for your business.

Gail Doby,
ASID, DSA & IDS – Gail is an author, speaker, interior
designer and business coach that loves construction design and remodeling.She is NCIDQ certified with a degree in
Finance & Banking as well as Interior Design.Gail started her career with a Fortune 500
company in Sales and Marketing and has been involved in the home furnishings
industry for 36 years.